Category Archives: uncategorized

We know how pervasive the most flagrant discrimination used to be when it came to people with mental disabilities and people with HIV. People with mental disabilities were once warehoused in institutions, apart from society, perhaps treated forever as children, without rights of their own. They were dubbed “retarded,” “insane,” even “mad,” rather than people […]

In an article published a few months ago, Soledad Deza and Adriana Álvarez, examine what they consider to be “an unattended medical obligation”: requiring informed consent to girls and adolescents to carry a pregnancy to term and give birth. Deza and Álvarez assess different interrelated and inescapably linked aspects of early motherhood, among which is […]

Many communities that hard being hit particularly hard by the opioid epidemic are looking for innovative ways to increase efforts to reach out to PWID and reverse the exponential increases in overdose deaths, infectious disease, and substance use in their regions by operating supervised safe injection sites. The city of Philadelphia is well on its […]

In recent years, it has become increasingly difficult to drum up bipartisan support in the U.S. for federal legislation on various issues, including reproductive health. Yet Senators and Representatives continue to introduce, reintroduce, and sometimes even pass bills aimed at addressing unmet reproductive health needs and improving reproductive health outcomes, particularly among underserved and marginalized […]

Last Friday, October 18th, Philip Alston, Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, presented his report on human rights and digital welfare states to the UN General Assembly. The report, a result of Alston’s country visits to the UK, the US as well as 60 submissions from 34 countries, warns of the misuse and […]

This post was written by Francesca Nardi, former intern at the O’Neill Institute, and Rebecca Reingold. Other countries take various approaches to regulating the provision of childhood and adolescent vaccines, and many afford significantly greater deference to adolescents’ decision-making capacity than the U.S. Many of these approaches recognize that imposing fixed age restrictions on adolescent […]

Attorneys’ duty of confidentiality, its limits and consequences, are often portrayed in movies, tv series, and every introductory law class. It is considered and understood as an essential guarantee for the right of every individual to a fair defense and as a major pillar of the judicial system. However, when it comes to the medical […]

It has now been 3 months since I completed the Global Health Law LL.M. Program and exactly a month since I started working as a post-graduate Fellow at the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law (the Institute). The program was a great foundation for all the skills one can acquire in the field […]

The United States is making major progress in responding to the HIV epidemic, building on the remarkable success of effective antiretroviral therapy at promoting health among people living with HIV (PLWH). With high quality care and ongoing treatment, PLWH can live long and healthy lives, and today over half of PLWH in the United States […]

Last week India’s lower house of Parliament passed a bill that would ban commercial surrogacy in the country. The passage of this bill has been celebrated by some, and criticized by others, as it brings India into step with a number of countries around the world that have banned commercial surrogacy. The commercial surrogacy industry […]

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The views reflected in this blog are those of the individual authors and do not necessarily represent those of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law or Georgetown University. This blog is solely informational in nature, and not intended as a substitute for competent legal advice from a licensed and retained attorney in your state or country.